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jfruh writes "Sharp, the Japanese LCD supplier in dire financial straits, is trying to cut staffing by offering an early retirement package. Unfortunately, it seems Sharp employees are eager to abandon a sinking ship. The company was planning on cutting its headcount by about 2,000 employees with the move; instead, it had to cut short the program after getting nearly 3,000 applicants."

Japan's demographics (older than most other countries as an average) do tend to skew things upward a bit on their own, but think about it - instead of getting laid off or cut off, you get a steady income and go work somewhere else at the same time (and even while searching for another job, it's at least something to subsist from).

Your definition of socialism and the dictionary's definitions differ significantly in their breadth:

Merriam webster's definition:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods2a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private propertyb : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state3: a stage of society in Marx

I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting.

Marx and followers (not including Spencer) were unable to separate the concepts of ownership and control. Marx was so stupid he thought it impossible to control something you don't own. (eg driver can't steer a stolen car).

Marx was so stupid he thought it impossible to control something you don't own. (eg driver can't steer a stolen car).

He died in 1883. If cars existed at all back then they would have been steam-powered monstrosities that would have required a crew of 17 and a great deal of experience to operate. It would have been all but impossible to steal one at all.

(*) Actual socialism, of course, is worker control of the means of production, and has nothing to do with what Americans call "socialism" at all.

Actual socialism is workers having the illusion of having control of the means of production with the state having the actual control and screwing the workers whenever possible.

Actual capitalism is workers having the illusion of choice and freedom with the owners having the actual control and screwing the workers whenever possible.

lol witty one liners lol. Also capitalism failed at the beginning of C20, long before the Soviet experiment, but good luck trying to convince yourself otherwise while America continues creeping to the right and China's managed economy smoothly takes over.

China isn't anything of the sort. It carefully regulates its industry in the interests of the nation, and you're not going to get anywhere in business there if you don't grease the right palms. Its stock market is still a joke.

(of course, "authoritarian capitalism" is such a misnomer it's not even funny)

Regulation exists in every single country of the world. Given, China strongly regulates strategic resources and its economy has traits of crony capitalism, but so does US and it has far more regulations than China could possibly dream to have. That is one of the main traits of crony capitalism, by the way: excessive, complex and often illogical regulations, which favor one part over another depending on political will.

And no, authoritarian capitalism is not a misnomer, authoritarianism and free-market ca

That definition of conservatism is limited to the American conservatives; in Europe, where the term originated, conservatives were far from fans of capitalism, much less of laissez-fair, and supported a controlling state with strong ties to the dominant religion (Catholic Church here in Latin countries), like in the "God, Homeland and Family" motto that was used here in Portugal.

God, Homeland and Family are indeed terms very popular among conservatives, be it in US, Europe or basically anywhere. These ideals need harsh and numerous laws to be maintained and therefore strong governments tending to the authoritarianism. The ideals of family and religion in specific have strong ties with private property even in Latin countries (as mine) and therefore with capitalism.

Thanks darling, but I claim no such thing. Like many people, she didn't fit the labels cleanly, but she was still much more a New- or American-style Conservative than a traditional European conservative.

the thing that people do not recognise is that Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a nineteenth-century Liberal.

-- Milton Friedman

The kind of Conservatism which he and I...favoured would be best described as âliberalâ(TM), in the old-fashioned sense.

-- Keith Joseph

She was much more a New- or American-style Conservative than a traditional European conservative.

Because "people" are wrong, and you and Milton Friedman own the truth, right? Please... You can use whoever warped definitions you may choose for words, but in the end that proves nothing. By the notation officially accept in political science, be it in US or Europe, she was a conservationist.

Bzzt wrong. Stop saying that. China is a country achieving socialism by the capitalist road. Look up "capitalist roaders", you'll see that it's a heresy of socialism and Mao warned against it as it would destroy everything he worked for in exchange for temporary prosperity. Gosh, what happened after Mao died? The People's Revolution was hijacked by a bunch of jackasses. Sad.

Achieving socialism by the capitalist road is like trying to quench a fire by pouring gasoline onto it, and any "People's Revolution" is always hijacked by jackasses, starting by those who first make it happen. Mao was a psychopath of the same kind of Stalin or Hitler.

This is Japan. Their CEOs are known to take paycuts when the company tanks. This is a different culture. The retirees probably live with the children and raise the grandchildren. Sharp probably just has an aging workforce like every other developed country and the retirement package was good enough.

Why is this a bad sign?Why should people in their mid 50's or older not be perfectly happy to stop working while still being paid? The company I work with is closing down the IBM mainframes and a lot of people are leaving rather than re-training. That comment about a "sinking ship" is totally missing the point, the ship may or may not be sinking but people who have 30 years of working no longer feel they have something to prove. Of course the retirement package on offer has to be adequate but this one certainly seems to be that!

Early retirement is one way to cut the work force – however, if done poorly it can lead to a brain drain.

I'd say it almost always does, because the people most likely to volunteer are the ones most likely to find another job quickly.

One company I worked for decided to lay off about a third of the staff, and half of the staff volunteered to go. They got rid of the third they thought they needed the least, which pissed off the remaining volunteers enough that most of us just found new jobs and quit.

The Quebec Government did this in 1997 in the healthcare sector (since healthcare is public) granting retirement 10 years early to 4000 nurses and 1500 doctors, which became an *immediate* problem. We are *still* recovering from this. An entire industry was built around this catch-up knowledge transfer required to fill the gap. It will take another 10-15 years to fill the gap and massive healthcare issues it has created, and will have cost more than the money saved.

Japanese companies exist firstly to provide employment and look after their workforce. Sounds strange I know. Because of that the workforce feels they are part of a family and it isn't uncommon for them to work unpaid when things get really bad.

I remember when the Nova language school chain collapsed. All the foreign teachers expected to be paid right up until the end, even though the most of the Japanese staff had not been receiving wages for a couple of months at that point. Similarly when Nissan was havi

Early retirement is one way to cut the work force â" however, if done poorly it can lead to a brain drain. The more oversubscribed it is the more likely this will happen.

Only if they granted early retirement on a first-come, first-served basis. They may well have done it on a poorest-reviews, first-served basis. In fact, if you have less applicants than you were looking for, and you let them all go, that is far more likely to eliminate desired talent than even FIFO.

The severance package at the place I work is a lot better than "2 weeks pay per year of service". I believe Japan has fairly strong employees' protection so Sharp had to make the package attractive.They did.

I don't live in the US (either) but if I did, walking the Appalachian Trail while still being young enough to make it would be very attractive. A few weeks around the Grand Canyon, there are a lot of things to do if you aren't tied down to going in to work to get paid.

Sharp wants to get rid of it’s employees voluntary, so the severance package has to be sweet. This is particularly true in Japan, where the chance of a older worker finding new, full time employment is slimmer than in other countries.

And it’s early retirement – which implies their pensions kick in. Maybe not at 100% - but it should be kicking out income for the rest of their lives.

Why is this a bad sign?
Why should people in their mid 50's or older not be perfectly happy to stop working while still being paid?

They can be happy of course. I'm sure it's great for them. I would take that option in a heartbeat, just so I could continue doing the stuff I'm interested in.
But for the company, it means the veterans would rather be doing something else. And it implies that it's not a great place to work.

A lot has been written about Sony, especially in Japan where it was THEIR giant taking on the world. Sony USED to be a tech company run by techs. Googles 20% work on your own project sound nice? Pah! At Sony entire teams could work 100% on stuff that nobody knew could ever work. Then around the millennium a new guy was put in charge and he did not come up through the company as a tech but was strictly management. He too wanted to streamline the business and get rid of dead wood old engineers. It worked BRILLIANTLY. Not only was the package VERY attractive so all who could, took it but new jobs were waiting with little upstart companies like Samsung but I don't suppose you ever heard of them. Oh wait, isn't that the dingy Korean company that makes cheap Japanese knock-offs. Well, they can never compete because Japan has all the know-how locked up in job contracts... OOOOPS!

It was an epic brain drain and one Sony never really recovered from. It wasn't their only mistake but it was a hell of a nail in the coffin. Sharp did better, Sharp still has a reputation for Japanese made (and for the very old and very young, there was a time when Japanese made meant quality of an insane degree even the swiss found hard to beat. A Sony TV just worked, yes it was expensive but it just worked. And then management took over, streamlined the business and that stopped. Samsung quality is catching up but only because Japanese quality is going down.

Note that the asian giants on the rise are NOT streamlining their business and all the western ex-giants have streamlined themselves to dead. The simple fact is that pure managers can't see the next hit, the Walkman and the PS were things no manager could have seen. For sony to enter the console industry against the giants in that sector was considered insane.

When the techs left and management took over, Sony lost its edge. In the west people only know Sony the electronics giant same as say Nintendo. Did you know Nintendo once made a vacuum cleaner? Post WW2 Japan grew a tradition of little workplaces were people were busy trying to come up with anything to produce and export. Because with no natural resources and a devastated economy, that was the only way Japan was going to make money. Building thingies, firs cheap and crap, then cheap and okay and finally expensive and bloody good. And they did this at the cost of western companies that were to busy stream lining their businesses.

If your young, name a WESTERN TV maker. That actually still makes TV's. Every western household has a TV but who supplies them? The asians. Yeah, that worked out well, for the asians but the likes of Philips? Shadows of their former self as they focussed on their core compentency in existing shareholder meetings. PIty that it turned out loosing money is their core compentency.

You can see it with Hostess. I said it before, as a EU person I can't see the big deal, their snacks just ain't that good. When was the last time they extended their product range in a significant way? And I don't mean a chocolate twinkie but as a TV company, making a walkman, producing a game console. Look at how much flack MS is getting for daring to go into hardware. Streamlining your business is just another way of saying "we are closing down". In tech, the next big thing needs to be researched yesterday if you want to launch it tomorrow. Except the real time line is measured in decades and you will have many failed research projects in the mean time. But you got to do that if you want that massive hit.

Another reason that racing to the bottom never works is because there is always someone at the bottom waiting to take your place. Sharp can't keep in the display race, that just means the next iPad's displays will be all Samsung, now boosted by the free to hire Sharp engineers.

Surely Sharp knows the history of its major rival. Things must be dire indeed to follow the path of certain doom.

Well said... and you're probably right, the TV market looks like Sony vs. Samsung right now, with Panasonic holding down plasmas, but with LED... Sharp had Aquos running good for a while, decent picture, good price, and way thinner than it's counter parts, but it's been almost a decade since those days, not much has changed with Sharp, Sony & Samsung have features that Sharp doesn't. Sharp now sits somewhere between budget and high end tvs, which doesn't have much of a market. Also, Samsung & Sony

and for the very old and very young, there was a time when Japanese made meant quality of an insane degree even the swiss found hard to beat.

My grandfather has told me on a number of occasions how Made in Japan indicated that products were complete and total junk prior to 1980 or so. Essentially the same stigma that "Made in China" bears today. So I'm not sure which era for the "very old" you're talking about - perhaps prior to WW2 or something?

I can testify that the 1970 Honda 600n was (and is) a fine automobile.

Air cooled converted motorcycle 600cc two banger with a four speed shifter in the dash.. No car ever improved my driving as much. You have to drive like Schumacher to keep up with traffic. Learn how to drive it, then learn again with 3 friends in it with you. I should get another, they float by on craigslist every once in a while, some times for way too much.

this is true also when you look from management perspective - overoptimised organisation is not capable to adapt to change in environment because it can only do what it does well. This said - not all of optimizing is bad. Companies grow fat and this fat need to be cut somehow from time to time. I have been working motly in big corporations and there is another thing that they do not have - easy way to change. In fact in some situations it was easier to fire the whole dep and hire a new (usually but not alwa

Every western household has a TV but who supplies them? The asians. Yeah, that worked out well, for the asians but the likes of Philips?

Overrated. Most Philips consumer electronics like TVs or VCRs two decades ago had labels saying: manufactured in Japan by Matsushita. Most Philips devices were in fact manufactured by Asian brands. Other times it was Blaupunkt or Grundig doing the manufacturing in Germany. Philips did manufacture lightbulbs and shaving machines but little else. Most was relabeled.

The history of Sony's management is quite fascinating. I've lost the link, but I recall there being an article about Sony's decision over who to replace their then-CEO around 1999 (Norio Ohga), who had been CEO for ages and brought Sony to new economic heights. The choice of his successor was either the head of Sony Entertainment (i.e. the copyright/media side of Sony) or the head of Sony Computer (i.e. the head of the electronics side). They ended up choosing the head of the copyright/media side of Sony, Nobuyuki Idei.

Anecdotally, since that decision, I've noticed that Sony's technology shine has dropped completely off my radar (i.e. I don't even turn to them to find out what the latest and greatest tech is, whereas at one point they were certainly a contender for something that I'd consider cool), while their foray into rent-seeking for their copyright has also gone off the deep end.

I might be wrong about the details of the history - I'd be interested in finding the article again, or having the background.

If it's true, I believe the change in the "personality" or "culture" of Sony reflects the decision that they made to make the head of their copyright/media division the head of the company. I believe their shareholders have been paying for that decision ever since.

Pure management who basically payed his knowledge workers to give their knowledge to his competitors.

To me it remains funny every time MS or Google is blasted for having to many side projects. I hate MS with a passion too but their attempts with the Zune were bad BUT necessary. Sure, it is fun to laugh at their failures but that they tried shows they still got the right idea, just the wrong execution.

Sony's woes also stem from the fact that it essentially got too big for it's own good and ended up competing with itself and eating itself from within. The company that practically invented the portable music market lost most of it's market share, even at home, to companies like Apple because their music arm was constantly fighting with their manufacturing arm trying to hamstring the mobile devices they sold. The result was stagnation.... I see Samsung going down a very similar path, for instance they se

Your right, Sony SHOULD have created the iPod. In fact, during the Samsung/Apple trial it became clear BOTH had been looking at work Sony was doing for inspiration. So... where did these Sony phones that inspired the iPhone end up?

Sony had done their own tech before the management take over but they did because they thought they had the superior system. Afterwards they did it for pure lockin reasons, like the mini-disc fiasco. It should have just supported MP3, I had one that I purely used with selfmade dis

Thing is Sharp's problems are all financial. The high value of the Yen makes their products expensive to export so it is hard to compete with Korean and Chinese companies. It is hard to understate just how bad it is. In 2006-2007 you get about 230 Yen to the Pound, now it is about 130 Yen to the Pound. Back then I was rich when I visited Japan, now everything costs twice as much and I have to be frugal.

They also invested a lot of money in developing their business right before the Yen went up, so while they

You had me until you brought up Microsoft going into hardware. They're not "going into hardware", they have been into hardware for as long as I can remember. Partly that's because I'm younger than some around here and I come from the PC era, but that only drives home my point; really old PCs were outfitted with Microsoft mice, often bus mice. Much much later Microsoft put out game controllers and they've even made two game consoles! Microsoft is not "go[ing] into hardware". They're competing directly with t

we do not know how significant 1000 extra employees are (other than a 50% increase in expected numbers). What would make it more meaningful would be to know the size of the population of employees who were given the offer (what if 5000 employees were given the offer, what if 500,000?).

When you offer an early retirement package and there's a mad scramble of people trying to take you up on it, the real danger is that you lose your best and brighttest. While it does get rid of headcount, it runs a real risk of losing people that you can't actually afford to lose.

Plus if the employees all want out, it doesn't say good things about their faith in the future of the company.

It's not that simple. The company is still alive and selling/developping new products. You can't just stop and start over. What you want is a cleanup.

I have a feeling this article doesn't include enough information to understand the actual issue at hand. Getting 3000 applications doesn't mean they actually qualify. Then again, we don't know what qualifies a person for early retirement at Sharp. If there's a union is gets even trickier.

While it does get rid of headcount, it runs a real risk of losing people that you can't actually afford to lose.

Other the CEO and their highly-paid cronies, who exactly can't a company afford to lose? As near as I can tell the modern "I can manage anything without knowing anything about it" manager thinks only THEY are indispensable. Everyone else--you know, the people who actually know stuff about the industry and technology the company depends on--is just a replaceable cog in the machine.

So while the point you make is obviously true there is ample evidence that CEOs are heavily selected to be the kind of person w

I can understand why the employers are for such a system. I can understand the employers buying a few politicians, and politicians and shills allowing themselves to bought, to make perpetuate the system.

But what galls me is that the employees are the most strident defenders of this system. Oftentimes it is the same employees who shout vociferously about freedom and liberty. They talk till cows come home about how the entrepreneur is the essence of America and how great it would be if everyone and their br

"Now, the difference in our plans is I want that 2,000 to go to you, and the vice president would like to be spending the 2,000 on your behalf."

And it is, of course, a completely accurate statement - Bush wants the $2,000 to go to the voter, because he knows that more of it will end up in the pockets of his campaign contributors. What it doesn't cover is the value for that money.

I'm mystified why the USA is not familiar in general with these numbers (it probably has something to do with media ownership). Here we go ( taken from 2006 WHO data [who.int]):

The problem is that in Cuba, being a doctor is one of the few professions where you both get respect, and, against the relative levels of poverty in Cuba, an acceptable standard of living. The problem is that Cuba does not allow doctors to emigrate out of the country. I sympathise with why they do this - if they spend the time and money training these people to get them a better lifestyle than the average Cuban then why should the state then let them use that additional income they gain in that profession t

I fail to see why this is a problem from the POV of the USA - they have no problems with contracts that enforce similar arrangements, or enjoin the contracted party to never use the skills he gained working for one employer for the benefit of another.

In Cuba, you get your education from the state, giving you a skillset that you then employ for the benefit of the state. If they want to be able to practice medicine elsewhere for higher gains, they should make the investment and pay for their own training, lik

Some mod thought it is off topic. Getting overwhelming response for an early retirement scheme is nothing unusual. Only in the USA, because of the unnatural linking of healthcare to employment, we see such early retirement options as strange or newsworthy. May be I should have explained it better.

I can two types of people who would jump at the chance for early retirement:

1) People actually close to retirement
2) People who are not close to retirement, but know they have the skills to get another job

The person who is barely scraping by at their job? Not going to jump ship (unless they are planning on changing careers). I see this as a fine way to lose some of the best and brightest really quickly.

Or companies offer buy outs. I've seen it a lot lately in the US and it's usually the smarter ones who take the packages because after the offers for early retirement or buy-outs close, then you're left with the folks Couldn't find a job because of multiple factors (too lazy, no ambition, no skills etc.) or are not financially secure in doing a job transition. Then eventually, layoffs occur and you start to get into "survivor syndrome" [appelbaumconsultants.com] where the rest of the people left start to resemble something out of